The newly revived Prelude has barely been out a month, however Honda simply revealed a racing model. Set to enter competitors subsequent 12 months, the Prelude-GT is Honda’s new challenger for the top-level GT500 class of Japan’s Tremendous GT sequence. It could appear like the brand new Prelude, however it is a very completely different beast beneath.
Like all present GT500 automobiles, the Prelude-GT is constructed round a carbon-fiber monocoque, with sports activities carbon bodywork that resembles its street automotive counterpart. Per rules, the Prelude-GT makes use of a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine making round 650 horsepower, which is routed to the rear wheels by way of a six-speed sequential transmission. So, fairly completely different from the 200-horse manufacturing mannequin.
The Prelude-GT will race in opposition to the Toyota GR Supra GT500 and the Nissan Z Nismo GT500. It replaces Honda’s earlier Tremendous GT machine, the Civic Sort R-GT, whose four-door bodywork wasn’t conducive to creating a aggressive race automotive.
As our colleagues at Motorsport.com notice, the Civic Sort R-GT has to date managed only one victory in its two years of competitors. This 12 months, it hasn’t completed higher than 2nd, with Toyota dominating the sphere.
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Supply: Honda
“[W]e see potential to attain the next stage than the Civic Sort R-GT by making use of the data gained over these previous two years to the event of a Prelude-based Tremendous GT machine,” stated Honda Racing’s Masahiro Saeki. Subsequent 12 months, Tremendous GT may also carry aerodynamic restrictions, so competitors ought to get even fiercer.
As Motorsport.com notes, it’s uncommon for a constructor to exchange a Tremendous GT automotive so rapidly as Honda has with the Civic—the previous NSX-GT ran from 2017 to 2023—however such is the character of the competitors within the sequence. Tremendous GT is among the most vital racing sequence in Japan, and Honda can’t maintain being proven up by its fiercest rivals.
